THE ARCANE ARCHIVE

Aleister Crowley on Politics

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From: shri
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 97 19:22:36 -0400
Subject: Aleister Crowley on Politics
is a new essay by Aleister Crowley, just
posted to the Thelema Kaaba's web site at the following URL:
http://www.globalserve.net/~shri/politics.html
"Aleister Crowley on Politics" collates all of Crowley's major political
insights into a concise, coherent, and crystal clear original exposition
of the political principles and implications of the Law of Thelema. If
you're interested in Aleister Crowley's Law of Thelema, you owe it to
yourself to check this out!
---------------------------
[from the URL listed above]
INTRODUCTION
It is unfortunate that Aleister Crowley never wrote a single
systematic treatise on the theory of politics, for Crowley's visionary
genius shone far beyond the occult realms for which he is noted, into
the heart of the State and the social problems of the Twentieth
Century: problems which, far from having been resolved by the fall of
Communism, it is only now beginning to be recognized and understood by
the leading intellectuals of the time are leading towards the greatest
catastrophe in history, comparable to the prehistoric Neolithic
Revolution, from which history itself emerged. The work which follows
is a "synthetic" essay. It was compiled from more than a dozen of
Crowley's political writings, by a process of "scissors and paste."
First, all of Crowley's major political insights were collected and
compared, out of which emerged a set of definite themes (see the
Bibliography at the end of the essay). These were then reorganized, in
order of length. Finally, the individual quotations were "sewn
together." The result is a logical and coherent exposition of
Crowley's ideas, such as Crowley himself might have written had he
been inspired to do so. This work meets a very real need. There is
very little understanding, even amongst Thelemites, as to the
political implications of the Law of Thelema. "Liber Oz" is often
cited, but it is only a skeleton or outline of a possible future
constitution, devoid of context. Many Thelemites seem to be attracted
to an anarchist, anarcho-capitalist, or even anarcho-fascist
interpretation of the Law of Thelema, little aware that the Prophet
himself rejected both pure anarchism and capitalism, considered Hitler
to be an instrument of the Black Brothers, and Mussolini a fool.
Crowley was far ahead of his time, as the following paper clearly
shows. Not only did Crowley understand that monetarism is servitude,
and that urban industrialist capitalism/consumerism/corporatism is
really no different in the long term from socialism, and the mother of
imperialism and warfare (about which, surprisingly, he was not
enthusiastic), but he understood that the increasing importance of
technology would lead inevitably to a "technocracy," a new
dictatorship of "experts," and a philosophy of mechanism, in which the
individual would be reduced to a cog in the social machine, and that
the increasing complexification of industry would inevitably end in
authoritarianism and collapse, such as is foreseen by many
contemporary radical intellectuals. While many modern savants look to
grassroots democracy as a remedy for our social ills, Crowley rejected
democracy also as just another form of dictatorship by the weak, the
mediocre, and the vicious. And in his call for the rejection of
materialism in favour of a new spirituality, decentralization, return
to the land base, the radical simplification of society and its legal
system, and in his recognition of the need for an ideal State situated
above and beyond the "bottom line" of the dictatorship of the rich,
Aleister Crowley is in the very forefront of the radical ecotopian
vision of the future. Clearly, Aleister Crowley is a prophet to be
reckoned with, whose vision of the New Aeon, ridiculed during his
lifetime, now seems, in the late Twentieth Century, to be looming, all
too uncomfortably close!
A note on the text: All of the words which follow were written by
Aleister Crowley, with one exception, indicated by the use of square
brackets. I have made the use of capitals consistent, and I have
normalized some spellings, but otherwise the only other editorial
discretion which I have utilized is that of selecting and ordering the
selections in order to make a coherent exposition. I have paid a great
deal of attention to Crowley's meaning in context, including many
passages not included herein; I believe that the following accurately
represents the tenor, substance, sophistication, and complexity of
Aleister Crowley's mature political thought.
_________________________________________________________________
ALEISTER CROWLEY ON POLITICS
Of old, the generality of men desired only things of which there were
enough for all, such as wives, children, food, flowers, music, and
various pleasures. Today, the press has insanely tried to make all men
desire things which demand the slavery of other men for their
enjoyment, and so are in their very nature inaccessible to all. The
press has done this in order to make men work harder to get money, of
course in vain, since money becomes valueless as soon as it is more or
less evenly divided. For this phantom men have given up their true
wealth, which was attainable by wholesome and moderate labour, health,
happiness, and the incalculable spiritual treasures which Burns at his
plough, and Boehme at his last, could only share with the Westminsters
and the Rothschilds, but create for the endowment of mankind at no
material cost whatsoever.
The technical developments of almost every form of wealth are the
forebears of Big Business; and Big Business, directly or indirectly,
is the immediate cause of War.
Society has had bad masters, who, wishing to increase their material
wealth and luxury, tried every means to force men to slave for them,
instead of being independent units. Also, profoundly conscious of the
contempt in which they and their riches were held by poets and
artists, mystics, scholars, and even by the merely well-born, they
used the power of their money to destroy the esteem in which men held
wit, art, breeding, and so forth. They did this even at the cost of
diminishing their own true happiness, for of old the rich gained much
from the service of genius. They have only endured one type of
"superior man," for their envy has made them wish to destroy poets and
scholars and so forth altogether; that man is the man of applied
science. Him they still tolerate, even encourage, as his work aids
them directly to pile up still more money. They have cut their own
throats in more ways than one. Firstly, they, and especially their
families, have become bored with life. They want new worlds to
conquer, yet they have cut themselves off from the worlds infinite in
scope, where conquest is an endless and increasing joy. Extravagance
itself cannot tell them how to spend their money to their own
advantage or that of others, for they have exiled just those brains
that could have helped them.
Again, by making the goal of ambition a thing so obvious and vulgar
that the basest can apprehend and pursue it, they have created a
competition against themselves of just those people who, incapable of
higher pursuits, will rush blindly upon them, armed with their own
grossness, avarice, and envy, and outnumbering them by thousands to
one. This danger they have recognized too late; to meet it, they have
made oppressive laws, multiplied taxes, created a Praetorian Guard of
police, and at last plunged the world into war. It was a logical but a
fatal folly. This made men soldiers to bring them under laws yet more
rigorous than before, and to kill as many competitors in the race for
wealth as possible. But some survived, and these men, trained to arms,
aware of the power of discipline and organization and become
contemptuous of death, demanded their share of the spoils. There was
less labour to go round; its price increased. Yet there was less
wealth produced and its price rose in sympathy. Depreciation of the
purchasing power of money was universal; everybody was poorer in
everything but the bits of paper which the various governments had
issued, as the Chinese hoped to propitiate evil spirits by casting
worthless shreds of tissue in the air!
No, the poets in their time were no poorer; and the rich men may still
gnash their teeth and howl with envy when they see us; for our
treasure is infinite, and, free to all who can enjoy it, is accessible
to none who cannot.
Mass production for profit fails when its markets are exhausted; so
every effort is made to impose it not only on the native but the
foreigner, and should guile fail, then force! But the process
ineluctably goes on; when the whole world buys the nasty stuff, and
will accept no other, the exploiter is still faced by diminishing
returns. No possibility of expansion; sooner or later dividends
dwindle, and the business is bust. To even the most stupid it becomes
plain at this stage that war is wholly ruinous; organization breaks
down altogether; one meaningless revolution follows another; famine
and pestilence complete the job. Last time--when Osiris replaced
Isis--the wreck was limited in scope--note that it was the civilized,
the organized part that broke down. This time there is no civilization
which can escape being involved in the totality of the catastrophe.
The obscure autocrats of Diplomacy and Big Business are infinitely
stupid and short-sighted; they cannot see an inch beyond their too
often stigmatically shapen probosces, except where the profit of the
next financial year is concerned. They live in perpetual panic, and
shy at their own shadows. They accordingly attack even the most
innocuous windmills in suicidal charges.
But what will the rich do next? The survivors of their armies have for
the most part gone onto the game. Social revolutions have occurred
over a great part of the earth, and elsewhere have only been postponed
because the dearth of labour has, by raising its price, temporarily
obscured, for the less acute minds, the hard fact that there is less
wealth than ever to go round. But the rich themselves, hard hit by the
depreciation of securities and the lack of luxuries, are intensely
apprehensive of the awakening of the stupid avarice of the mob. Men
who would once have thought themselves princes if they could have a
cottage and a vineyard of their own at fifty, have been dazzled by
newspaper accounts of men become millionaires at twenty-five. The
sane, natural, worthy ambition has been replaced by insane greed and
envy. Even those who could still be content with reasonable comfort
see it farther away than ever, and observe also that their immemorable
liberties and pleasures are under ban. They want the rich man's place,
arbitrarily and at once, and, aware of his unscrupulous methods, see
no reason why they should not oppose force to fraud. Strikes,
revolutions, expropriations are in order. The rich may try another
war; the poor may refuse to become cannon-fodder. Also, another war
could only make bad worse; I think that even the rich see that.
The truth is that the prosperity of industrialism depended wholly upon
accident. After Waterloo, the Nineteenth Century was on the whole a
period of peace. The means of producing wealth was simplified faster
than the growing complexity of civilization demanded. The economic
blood showed a rising opsonic index. That has stopped. We can no
longer devise means to overcome temporarily our crises as we have done
hitherto. We have no reserves of capital, either in brain or bone to
draw on. Adjustments ask too much. Observe my knife; 'tis dull? A
stone mends that. But my typewriter? I must take it at great cost and
trouble to Palermo; and then they probably make a mess of the job. A
little more annoyance, and I shall scrap it and go back to a quill
from the first goose I meet! I think that this is a good analogy of
what will happen to civilization. The machinery will break down beyond
repair, and only the simple will survive. What exact means the
stupidity of the rich will devise to precipitate this event does not
seem to matter much. The only alternative is a new religion or a new
cult of art; and that isn't likely; the people have been too
hopelessly debauched by Christianity and newspapers. There must be an
optimum relation between industry and agriculture, between town and
country. When the proper balance is not struck, the community must
depend on outside help, importing what it lacks, exporting its
surplus. This is an unnatural state of affairs; it results in
business, and therefore ultimately in war. Whenever the proportion of
townsfolk to countryfolk grows too large, the nation is smashed. We
can only postpone the crash by our "scientific" schemes of
organization. So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the
public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated
herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement
with the bosses. For the rest, deafen the whole world with senseless
clamour. Mechanize everything! Give nobody a chance to think.
Standardize "amusement." The louder and more cacophonous, the better!
Brief intervals between one din and the next can be filled with
appeals, repeated 'till hypnotic power gives them the force of orders,
to buy this or that product of the "business men" who are the real
power in the State. Industrialism, the mother and nurse of socialism,
[is] destroying the soul of the people.
An Utopia to end Utopias? Very good, so I will. Education, to begin
with; well, you've had all that in another letter. The main thing to
remember is that I want every individual taught as such, according to
his own special qualities. Then, teach them both sides of every
question: history, for example, as the play of economic forces, also,
as due to the intervention of Divine Providence, or of "sports" or
genius: and so for the rest. Train them to doubt--and to dare!
Then, somehow, as large a number of the most promising rebels should
be selected to lead a life of luxury and leisure. Let every country,
by dint of honouring its old traditions, be as different as possible
from every other. Restore the "Grand Tour," or rather, the roving
Englishman of the Nineteenth Century. Entrust them with the secrets of
discipline, or authority, or power. Hardship and danger in full
measure; and responsibility.
A great deal of such material will be as disgustingly wasted as it had
been in the past; and there will be much abuse of privilege. But this
must be allowed and allowed for; no very great harm will result, as
the weak and vicious will weed themselves out.
I have no sympathy with those who cry out against property, as if that
all men desire were of necessity evil; the natural instinct is to own,
and while man remains in this mood, attempts to destroy property must
no only be nugatory, but deleterious to the community. There is no
outcry against the rights of property where wisdom and kindness
administer it.
It is necessary for the development of freedom itself to have an
organization; and every organization must have a highly centralized
control. In order to obtain freedom to do your will, it is necessary
to submit voluntarily to discipline and organization. Evolution
implies structuralization. The power of man is greater than the power
of the amoeba, because he has specialized the function of our
protoplasm of which he is composed. In order to do the one thing which
you will truly you must therefore renounce all those other things
which may tempt you to swerve from the one purpose of your sojourn
amongst us.
In the body every cell is subordinated to the general physiological
control, and we who will that control do not ask whether each
individual unit of that structure be consciously happy. Be we do care
that each shall fulfil its function, and the failure of even a few
cells, or their revolt, may involve the death of the whole organism.
Yet even here the complaint of a few, which we call pain, is a warning
of general danger. Many cells fulfil their destiny by swift death, and
this being their function, they in no wise resent it. Should
haemoglobin resist the attack of oxygen, the body would perish, and
the haemoglobin would not thereby save itself. For every individual in
the State must be perfect in his own function, with contentment,
respecting his own task as necessary and holy, not envious of
another's. For so only mayst thou built up a free State, whose
directing will shall be singly directed to the welfare of all. Say not
that in this argument I have set limits to individual freedom. For
each man in this State which I propose is fulfilling his own True Will
by his eager acquiescence in the order necessary to the welfare of
all, and therefore of himself also. The problem of government is
therefore to find a scientific formula with an ethical implication.
This formula must be rigidly applicable to all sane men soever without
reference to the individual qualities of any one of them. The formula
is given by the Law of Thelema. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole
of the Law." It is intended ultimately that the temporal power of the
State be brought into the Law, and led into freedom and prosperity by
the application of its principles. This injunction, in one sense
infinitely elastic, since it does not specify any particular goal of
will as desirable, is yet infinitely rigid, in that it binds every man
to follow out exactly the purpose for which he is fitted by heredity,
environment, experience, and self-development. The formula is thus
also biologically indefeasible, as well as adequate, ethically to
every individual, and politically to the State. It combines monarchy
with democracy; it includes aristocracy, and conceals even the seeds
of revolution, by which alone progress can be effected. The absolute
rule of the State shall be a function of the absolute liberty of each
individual will.
The principle of popular election is a fatal folly; its results are
visible in every so-called democracy. The elected man is always the
mediocrity; he is the safe man, the sound man, the man who displeases
the majority less than any other; and therefore never the genius, the
man of progress and illumination. The submergence of the individual in
his class means the end of all true human relations between men. Every
class, as a class, is almost sure to have more defects than qualities.
As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively,
below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it.
Socialism means war. When the class moves as a class, there can be no
exceptions. It is this fundamental fact which ensures that every
democracy shall end with an upstart autocrat.
It has always been admitted that the ideal form of government is that
of a "benevolent despot," and despotisms have only fallen because it
is impossible in practice to assure the good-will of those in power.
The rules of chivalry, and those of Bushido in the East, gave the best
chance to develop rulers of the desired type. If any person of
position insists upon living a life of hardship and inconvenience when
he could do otherwise, then men will trust him, and he will be able to
execute his projects for the general good of the commonwealth. But he
must naturally be careful not to relax his austerities as his power
increases. Make power and splendour incompatible, and the social
problem is solved. Where honour is the only possible good to be gained
by the exercise of power, the man in power will strive only for
honour. This is, then, the first lesson in our great principle, the
attainment of honour through renunciation. The patriarchal system is
better for all classes than any other; the objections to it come from
the abuses of it. It is generally understood by all men of education
that the general welfare is necessary to the highest development of
the particular. The great nobles of all time have usually been able to
create a happy family of their dependents, and unflinching loyalty and
devotion have been their reward. The secret has been principally this,
that they considered themselves noble as well in nature as in name,
and thought it foul shame to themselves if any retainer met
unnecessary misfortune. You should treat everybody as king of the same
order as yourself. Experts will immediately be appointed to work out,
when need arises, the details of the True Will of every individual,
and even that of every corporate body whether social or commercial,
while a judiciary will arise to determine the equity in the case of
apparently conflicting claims. (Such cases will become progressively
more rare as adjustment is attained.) All appeal to precedent and
authority, the deadwood of the Tree of Life, will be abolished, and
strictly scientific standards will be the sole measure by which the
executive power shall order the people.
The minimum of organization is desirable; all artificial doctrinaire
multiplication of works which produce no wealth is waste; and for many
reasons (some absurd, like "social position") tend to create fresh
unnecessary necessities. When laws are reasonable in the eyes of the
average man, he respects them, keeps them, does his best to maintain
them; therefore a minute police force, with powers strictly limited,
is adequate to deal with the almost negligibly small criminal class. A
convention is laudable when it is convenient. When laws are unjust,
monstrous, ridiculous, that same average man, will he-nil he, becomes
a criminal; and the law requires a Tcheka or Gestapo with dictatorial
powers and no safeguards to maintain the farce. Also, corruption
becomes normal in official circles; and is excused. The basis of our
criminal law is simple, by virtue of Thelema: to violate the right of
another is to forfeit one's own claim to protection in the matter
involved. Every man has a right to fulfil his own will without being
afraid that it may interfere with that of others; for if he is in his
proper path, it is the fault of others if they interfere with him.
Acts invasive of another individual's equal rights are implicitly
self-aggressions. Men of "criminal nature" are simply at issue with
their True Wills. Only one symptom warns that you have mistaken your
True Will, and that is, if you should imagine that in pursuing your
way you interfere with that of another star. Collision is the only
crime in the cosmos.
What is money? A medium of exchange devised to facilitate the
transaction of business. Oil in the engine. Very good, then; if
instead of letting it flow as freely and smoothly as possible, you
balk its very nature; you prevent it from doing its True Will. So
every "restriction" on the exchange of wealth is a direct violation of
the Law of Thelema. Money must circulate, or it loses its value.
Progress demands anarchy tempered by common sense. All laws, all
systems, all customs, all ideals and standards which tend to produce
uniformity, being in strict opposition to Nature's will to change and
to develop through variety, are accursed.
_________________________________________________________________
POLITICAL WRITINGS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY
* "An Account of A.'.A.'." In Gems from the Equinox (St. Paul, MI:
Llewellyn, 1974), pp. 31-41. (All subsequent references to this work
shall appear as Gems.) *"An Appeal to the American Republic." In The
Works of Aleister Crowley (Des Plaines, IL: Yogi, n.d.), pp. 136-40.
Atlantis: The Lost Continent. Malton, ON, Canada: Dove, n.d.
The Book of the Law. York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1976.
* "Concerning the Law of Thelema." In The Equinox, Vol. III, No. 1
(New York: Weiser, 1974), pp. 225-38.
The Confessions. London: Arkana--Penguin, 1989.
The Heart of the Master. Montreal, PQ: 93 Pub., 1973.
* "An Intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order." In
The Equinox, Vol. III, No. 1, pp. 239-46.
* "Khabs Am Pekht." In Gems, pp. 99-110.
The Law Is for All. Phoenix, AZ: Falcon, 1983.
* "The Law of Liberty." In The Equinox, Vol. III, No. 1, pp. 45-52.
Liber Aleph: The Book of Wisdom or Folly. York Beach, ME: Weiser,
1991.
* Liber Oz. Published as a single card in 1942.
"Liber Porta Lucis." In Gems, pp. 651-55.
"Liber Trigrammaton." In The Law Is for All, pp. 339-44.
"Liber Tzaddi vel Hamus Hermeticus." In Gems, pp. 657-62.
The Magical Record of the Beast 666. Montreal, PQ: 93 Pub., 1972.
Magick in Theory and Practice. Secaucus, NJ: Castle, 1991.
Magick without Tears. Tempe, AZ: Falcon, 1973.
* "The Message of the Master Therion." In The Equinox, Vol. III, No.
1, pp. 39-43.
* "An Open Letter to Those Who May Wish to Join the Order." In The
Equinox, Vol. III, No. 1, pp. 207-24.
* The Scientific Solution of the Problem of Government. N.p.: Ordo
Templi Orientis, [1936].
The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. Publication information not
available.
* "Thien Tao." In Konx Om Pax (Des Plaines, IL: Yogi, n.d.), pp.
53-67.
EOF

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